Body Issues

I hate my body. Not in an anorexic, weight-issue kind of way. At every point in my journey to have a child, my body has failed. Every time, it seems to find new ways to let me down. My body seems to have a mind of its own, and its goals never align with mine.

In my early rounds of therapy, I would talk through my feelings of failure with my therapist. My mantra was “my body failed her, not me.” This was a means to not blame myself – I did everything I could to keep her safe. It was my body, not me, that failed her. That does keep me from thinking that there was something I did or didn’t do that caused this to happen. But, it is also a reminder that my body failed in its fundamental job to keep her safe from harm. At the end of the day, my body killed my daughter.  Sounds harsh, but it’s true.

As I look to our 3 losses after Vivienne, I can say that my body failed me at least twice again. Babies 3 and 4 were both ectopic pregnancies. My body couldn’t get these babies to a place where they could grow and develop, and instead, it put me at risk. Once again, my body failed in its basic job to follow the natural protocol of development, and 2 more babies died.

If there were a person responsible for all of this, I could direct all of my anger towards them. But ultimately, what is responsible is my body. Even though I try not to, my anger gets directed there – I don’t know where else I can reasonably put it. And considering I’m stuck with my body, and I can’t get away from it or change it, that is tough anger to manage.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to walk around with something you hate, all day, every day? I’m faced with looking at it every waking moment of the day. There it is – this thing that is responsible for the worst moments in my life, and I can’t get away from it, punish it, or even take out my anger on it.

It’s not as though the aspects that I hate are aspects I can change. If I hated my weight, my nose, my hair, I could do something to fix it. The solutions may or may not work, but at least there are solutions available. There are no solutions to fix what I hate about my body. I can’t un-do or change how my body has killed my children.

So what do I do with this anger? My only means to not blame myself for my children’s deaths is to blame my body. But then I am angry at something that I have to look at every day and that I can’t work out my anger on.